I ran some numbers just out of curiosity, and I think that the price of Shakespeare in his own time is pretty comparable to modern live entertainment. I think it would be unfair to compare with modern Shakespeare performances, since you can find those anywhere from a high school to the most famous stages in the world.
Although its not a play, I think the popularity of Shakespeare in his time is comparable with the modern performances of Harry Styles. Whatever your opinion on him, you cannot deny his pop culture impact. According to (http://walternelson.com/dr/elizabethan-incomes), a “country parson” in Shakespeare’s time made 240 pence a year, while the average salary in a rural area today is $30,000, according to (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2016/12/a_comparison_of_rura.html). For simplicity’s sake, I won’t take travel into account. The lowest ticket price for a Shakespeare play is 1p while the highest is 6p. Luckily, Harry Styles is performing in Cleveland at some point this year and tickets were still available online, so I was able to get some rough numbers from ticketmaster. The lowest price is $68 and the highest is $891.
| Ticket Price | % of income | |
| Shakespeare (low) | 1p | 1/240= 0.41% |
| Shakespeare (high) | 6p | 6/240= 2.5% |
| Harry Styles (low) | 68$ | 68/30000= 0.22% |
| Harry Styles (high) | 891$ | 891/30000= 3% |
It’s not exact, but you have to admit those values aren’t too shabby.
Those calculations required a lot of assumptions, so I tried one other method to compare the prices.
According to ( https://blog.oup.com/2016/01/facts-money-shakespeare-elizabethan-england-economy/ ), 1 pound is equal to 100 pounds in 2015. I did not account for the difference between 2015 and 2020 pounds because I figured it wasn’t too significant. 100 pounds is equal to 130$. This makes 1 pence equal to 54 cents. In conclusion, while my initial analysis was promising, the 1:100 pound method conversion has rendered the comparison with modern money useless.
So are Harry Styles tickets more expensive than Shakespeare? When going by percentage of income, Harry is cheaper for the lowest priced tickets, while Harry is more expensive for the high priced tickets. Overall, I think the percentages are pretty comparable and I hope that in a couple hundred years, some English class is analyzing Harry’s lyrics.
Planetary (Gab!) 